Previews

Halo 3 Hands-On Preview

Will Halo 3 change the face of online gaming? The Multiplayer Beta gives us an idea of what's in store.

Spiffy:

Unrivalled multiplayer gameplay; all sorts of new tricks and map strategies to learn.

Iffy:

Visuals are no longer state of the art; we only have so many hours in the day to play.

When I had the chance to sit down and chat with Microsoft game Studios' Shane Kim during the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta kickoff party, we kept coming back to a key point. Halo 3 is without a doubt the most important weapon in Microsoft's arsenal, and key to the Xbox 360 winning this generation. How exactly is Halo 3 going to render the competition speechless and secure this all-important victory? In one word, it's multiplayer.

How Halo Plans to Win

That's right, the key is multiplayer. It's not graphics, even though this is a better looking game than the two that came before -- Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 employs texture and lighting effects that lend the game and especially its environments a cleaner, more vibrant look than was possible on the first-generation Xbox. On the other hand, it's easy to say that the game looks like a very polished version of Halo 2, with a cohesive style that is instantly recognizable, yet not inspiring awe in an audience that has cut its teeth this year on the superlative visuals in Epic's Gears of War. Saying Halo 3 looks like the earlier games in the series isn't an insult, though, and far from it -- those games completely blew you away at that point in time. But Halo 3 isn't the obvious breakthrough in visual technology that Gears was.

It's not audio either, even though this has been one of the series' great strengths -- the sounds of gunfire pouring in through a surround sound speaker setup could almost allow a player to navigate across a war-torn battlefield by hearing alone. The oh-so satisfying sound of a rifle-butt as it smashes into an opposing Spartan's visor is also hard not to savor.

It's not the story -- the storyline in Halo 2 left many feeling unsatisfied, not due to a lack of quality, but instead because there was a sense that things felt unfinished. It's hard to feel satisfied without closure, and that payoff will finally be here in Halo 3.

It all comes back to multiplayer.

While it's still too early to think about evaluating Halo 3 as a finished product (a risk that publishers take when allowing critics to become involved in the beta testing process) one must wonder if the approach that Microsoft Game Studios is taking with presenting Halo 3 is the best possible strategy. When one is told that the driving force behind Halo 3 is the multiplayer, and not the graphics, the sound, or the story, one must try pretty hard not to read between the lines. By saying this, regardless of how good those elements of the game may be, you're setting those aspects of the game up for scrutiny. The back and forth chatter from many of the press at the Multiplayer Beta unveiling was bringing up the aforementioned state of the game's visuals, graphics being the first thing you assess in a video game, and how they weren't leaps and bounds over the last two games. Yet once their hands set down the wine glass and wrapped around a controller, the critics seemed to really be enjoying the Halo 3 experience.